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Three Children, Two Worlds. Free the Children founder Craig Kielburger (right) meets two child laborers in India. (Click image for full size. 16K)

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Free the Children founder discusses plight of the world's children

Craig Kielburger, the 16-year-old founder of Free the Children, recently appeared on the Stanley Foundation's public radio program, Common Ground. Kielburger spoke with Associate Producer Kristin McHugh. Common Ground airs on more than one hundred public radio stations across the United States.

What is Free the Children?

Craig Kielburger
Free the Children is an international movement made up of young people ranging in age all the way from 8 until 18. And basically it's an organization which tries to free children from abuse, [and] exploitation; for example, children who are working as child soldiers, or right now to free children in Kosovo from the horror that they're facing by shipping health and school supplies to them. Also, we work to free children even here in Canada and the United States from the idea that they're powerless, that they're not old enough or smart enough or capable enough to be involved in the decision-making process. So we try to free these children also by giving them a voice.

How would you define child labor abuse?

Kielburger
Well, the definition we use is that supported by the International Labor Organization which states "Child labor is that which stops a child's growth intellectually, physically, morally, socially, and emotionally." Using that definition we look not at children working, not at children helping out, nothing's wrong with that—everyone does a few chores around the house occasionally, learning responsibility, learning leadership. What we're talking about here is literally the exploitation of children. Children who are working long hours in hazardous working conditions. Children who are being exploited simply because they're poor, simply because they're illiterate. Children who are taking away the jobs of adults because children are cheaper labor in comparison. Children who are not receiving an education, who are losing their childhood. Why? Because the world simply doesn't care about their welfare. That is what we are talking about when we're referring to child labor.

Are there certain trades or industries where abuse is more prevalent?

Kielburger
You name it. Everything from the famous incidents where we look at the clothing lines and the shirts and shoes and soccer balls and toys that we use here in North America. I've had the chance to travel to Brazil to meet with children who use massive machetes to cut the sugar cane. And this sugar cane in turn ends up on our cereals and [in] our breakfast bowls every morning. Children who work in the sweatshops stitching the clothes. Children who work in the factories putting together the fireworks in hazardous conditions, which are in turn shipped around the world. Children who are being exploited in prostitution or being exploited as domestic servants. These two industries are often hidden away. Why? Because they don't affect us in North America and, therefore, often don't receive a lot of media attention.

Children around the world are being exploited whether it be right now as refugees in Kosovo kicked out of their homes or as the child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Or even here in the United States where children are being exploited because of abuse and neglect. In the United States you have one out of every four American children who live under the poverty line. In the past twenty years 50,000 American children have been shot dead by guns—more child gun casualties in the US than all the American casualties during the entire Vietnam War.

How and where do you draw the line between religious and moral beliefs and child labor?

Kielburger
In the United States is it a cultural issue with the 300,000 children who work in the plantations—children of the illegal, mainly from Mexico, immigrants. They work, not going to school, just moving [from] plantation to plantation and [with] the growing and picking. That's certainly not a cultural issue. In Brazil if you meet with the street children, you hear how they're rounded up by the police. I've had the chance to meet with these children and they explain how their friends have been killed or tossed in jail, or how they themselves were picked up by the police, stuck in a massive van, driven out to the rural areas, had a gun pointed to their face and said, "never come back." That's not a cultural issue. Right now in Kosovo that's not a cultural issue. Anywhere in this world people try to push aside, they try to create black-and-white issues, and they try to put a little gray in between and they'll call it a cultural issue. Some could have said here in the United States that it's a "cultural issue" with the segregation and the slavery [that] existed or a "cultural issue" in South Africa with apartheid. It's not a cultural issue. It's a question of abuse; it's a question of exploitation.

What do you see as the future of say five, ten, fifteen years down the road with this issue? Do you think that there will be some big improvements in child labor laws?

Kielburger
Absolutely. In fact, change is already coming about. Pakistan has recently raised the amount they're spending on primary education. Massive inroads are being made in Brazil with a labeling system for products that are child-labor free. Perhaps we need to look to the idea of maybe even lowering the voting age to sixteen, to give youth a greater voice. They did it in Brazil. And in schools they started educating about the political parties, about their stances, about what the true importance of the vote means.

As you see it happening more and more, youth are becoming involved. And as youth raise their voices, issues relating to their peers in the United States and around the world will begin to gain more and more attention on the world leaders' agendas. Until you have a voice, there's no way we're going to see massive inroads made in issues like child poverty, child labor, and child abuse. Why? Because you have no voice, no vote, and little economic clout.